Chapter 3 - Ebusiness: Electronic Business Value

Network Effect

Describes how products in a network increase in value to users as the number of users increases.

Social Tagging

Describes the collaborative activity of marking shared online content with keywords or tags as a way to organize it for future navigation, filtering, or search.

Search Engine Ranking

Evaluates variables that search engines use to determine where a URL appears on the list of search results.

Clickstream Data

Exact pattern of a consumer's navigation through a site.

Pay-Per-Click

Generates revenue each time a user clicks on a link to a retailer's website.

Pay-Per-Conversion

Generates revenue each time a website visitor is converted to a customer.

Pay-Per-Call

Generates revenue each time users click on a clink that takes them directly to an online agent waiting for a call.

Content Management System (CMS)

Helps companies manage the creation, storage, editing, and publication of their website content.

Digital Darwinism

Implies that organizations that cannot adapt to the new demands placed on them for surviving in the information age are doomed to extinction.

Ebusiness

Includes commerce along with all activities related to internal and external business operations such as servicing customer accounts, collaborating with partners, and exchanging real-time information.

Knowledge Management (KM)

Involves capturing, classifying, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing information assets in a way that provides context for effective decisions and actions.

Egovernment

Involves the use of strategies and technologies to transform government(s) by improving the delivery of services and enhancing the quality of interaction between the citizen-consumer and all branches of government.

Adwords

Keywords that advertisers choose to pay for and appear as sponsored links on the Google results pages.

Social Networking Analysis (SNA)

Maps group contacts identifying who knows each other and who works together.

Interactivity

Measures advertising effectiveness by counting visitor interactions with the target ad, including time spent viewing the ad, number of pages viewed, and number of repeat visits to the advertisement.

Information Reach

Measures the number of people a firm can communicate with all over the world.

Disintermediation

Occurs when a business sells direct to the customer online and cuts out the intermediary.

Personalization

Occurs when a company knows enough about a customer's likes and dislikes that it can fashion offers more likely to appeal to that person, say by tailoring its website to individuals or groups based on profile information, demographics, or prior transactions.

Paradigm Shift

Occurs when a new radical form of business enters the market that reshapes the way companies and organizations behave.

Real-Time Communication

Occurs when a system updates information at the same rate it receives it.

Native Advertising

Online marketing concept in which the advertiser attempts to gain attention by providing content in the context of the user's experience in terms of its content, format, style, or placement.

Sustaining Technology

Produces an improved product customers are eager to buy, such as a faster car or larger hard drive.

World Wide Web (WWW)

Provides access to Internet information through documents, including text, graphics, audio, and video files that use a special formatting language called HTML.

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

Publishes hypertext on the WWW, which allows users to move from one document to another simply by clicking a hot spot or link.

Long Tail

Referring to the tail of a typical sales curve.

Open Source

Refers to any software whose source code is made available free for any third party to review and modify.

Web 1.0 (or Business 1.0)

Refers to the World Wide Web during its first few years of operation between 1991 and 2003.

Cybermediation

Refers to the creation of new kinds of intermediaries that simply could not have existed before the advent of ebusiness.

Information Richness

Refers to the depth and breadth of details contained in a piece of textual, graphic, audio, or video information.

Crowdsourcing

Refers to the wisdom of the crowd.

Social Media

Refers to websites that rely on user participation and user-contributed content.

Social Graphs

Represent the interconnection of relationships in a social network.

Folksonomy

Similar to taxonomy except that crowdsourcing determines the tags or keyword-based classification system.

Crowdfunding

Sources capital for a project by raising many small amounts from a large number of individuals, typically via the Internet.

Tag

Specific keyword or phrase incorporated into website content for means of classification or taxonomy.

Reintermediation

Steps are added to the value chain as new players find ways to add value to the business process.

Knowledge Management System (KMS)

Supports the capture, organization, and dissemination of knowledge (i.e., know-how) throughout an organization.

Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP)

The Internet protocol web browsers use to request and display web pages using universal resource locators.

Mass Customization

The ability of an organization to tailor its products or services to the customers' specifications.

Mobile Business (or Mcommerce, Mbusiness)

The ability to purchase goods and services through a wireless Internet-enabled device.

Universal Resource Locator (URL)

The address of a file or resource on the web such as www.apple.com.

Ecommerce

The buying and selling of goods and services over the Internet.

HTML 5

The current version of HTML; delivers everything from animations to graphics, music to movies. Can be used to build complicated web applications and works across platforms, including a PC, tablet, smart phone, or smart TV.

Tacit Knowledge

The knowledge contained in people's heads.

Web 2.0 (or Business 2.0)

The next generation of Internet use--a more mature, distinctive communications platform characterized by new qualities such as collaboration and sharing, and free.

Dot-Com

The original term for a company operating on the Internet.

Social Networking

The practice of expanding your business and/or social contacts by constructing a personal network.

Microblogging

The practice of sending brief posts (140 to 200 characters) to a personal blog, either publicly or to a private group of subscribers who can read the posts as IMs or as text messages.

Taxonomy

The scientific classification of organisms into groups based on similarities of structure or origin.

Mashup Editor

WYSIWYG or What You See Is What You Get tools.

Mashup

Website or web application that uses content from more than one source to create a completely new product or service.

Search Engine

Website software that finds other pages based on keyword matching.

Reputation System

Where buyers post feedback on sellers.

Internet Service Provider (ISP)

A company that provides access to the Internet for a monthly fee.

Semantic Web

A component of Web 3.0 that describes things in a way that computers can understand.

Hashtag

A keyword or phrase used to identify a topic and preceded by a hash or pound sign (#).

Website Bookmark

A locally stored URL or the address of a file or Internet page saved as a shortcut.

Ezine

A magazine published only in electronic form on a computer network.

Internet

A massive network that connects computers all over the world and allows them to communicate with one another.

Disruptive Technology

A new way of doing things that initially does not meet the needs of existing customers.

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)

A nonprofit organization that has assumed the responsibility for IP address space allocation, protocol parameter assignment, domain name system management, and root server system management functions previously preformed under U.S. government contract.

Ebusiness Model

A plan that details how a company creates, delivers, and generates revenues on the Internet.

Business Model

A plan that details how a company creates, delivers, and generates revenues.

Selfie

A self-photograph placed on a social media website.

Domain Name Hosting (Web Hosting)

A service that allows the owner of a domain name to maintain a simple website and provide email capacity.

Instant Messaging (sometimes called IM or IMing)

A service that enables instant or real-time communication between people.

Application Programming Interface (API)

A set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications.

Collaboration System

A set of tools that supports the work of teams or groups by facilitating the sharing and flow of information.

Wiki

A type of collaborative web page that allows users to add, remove, and change content, which can be easily organized and reorganized as required.

Real Simple Syndication (RSS)

A web format used to publish frequently updated works, such as blogs, news headlines, audio, and video in a standardized format.

Intermediaries

Agents, software, or businesses that provide a trading infrastructure to bring buyers and sellers together.

Videoconference

Allows people at two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously as well as share documents, data, computer displays, and whiteboards.

Web Browser

Allows users to access the WWW.

Social Bookmarking

Allows users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks.

Social Network

An application that connects people by matching profile information.

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

An international community that develops open standards to ensure the long-term growth of the Web (www.w3.org).

Blog, or Web Log

An online journal that allows users to post their own comments, graphics, and video.

Eshop (Estore or Etailer)

An online version of a retail store where customers can shop at any hour.

Closed Source

Any proprietary software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder.

Business-to-Consumer (B2C)

Applies to any business that sells its products or services directly to consumers online.

Consumer-to-Business (C2B)

Applies to any consumer who sells a product or service to a business on the Internet.

Business-to-Business (B2B)

Applies to businesses buying from and selling to each other over the Internet.

Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C)

Applies to customers offering goods and services to each other on the Internet.

Web Conferencing (Webinar)

Blends videoconferencing with document-sharing and allows the user to deliver a presentation over the web to a group of geographically dispersed participants.

Collective Intelligence

Collaborating and tapping into the core knowledge of all employees, partners, and customers.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Combines art along with science to determine how to make URLs more attractive to search engines, resulting in higher search engine ranking.

Asynchronous Communication

Communication such as email in which the message and the response do not occur at the same time.

Synchronous Communication

Communications that occur at the same time such as IM or chat.

Explicit Knowledge

Consists of anything that can be documented, archived, and codified, often with the help of IT.

Open System

Consists of nonproprietary hardware and software based on publicly known standards that allow third parties to create add-on products to plug into or interoperate with the system.

Source Code

Contains instructions written by a programmer specifying the actions to be performed by computer software.

User-Contributed Content (also referred to as User-Generated Content)

Content created and updated by many users for many users.

Podcasting

Converts an audio broadcast to a digital music player.